Quotes About Language

The more honest I try to be, the more the right words recede into the distance.

Whatever can't be expressed might as well not exist.

We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse . It poses only a limited range of possibilities.

Expression and communication are essential; without these, civilization ends.

She was a keen observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that's what she was so good at - stirring people's emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this power...I only realized later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing to me.

The world is full of incomprehensible words

Si no lo entiendes sin que te lo explique, quiere decir que no lo entenderás por más que te lo explique

Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for its use, but people won't necessarily follow them.

Lampreys think very lamprey-like thoughts. About lamprey-like topics in a context that's very lamprey-like. There are no words for those thoughts. They belong to the world of water. It's like when we were in the womb. We were thinking things in there, but we can't express those thoughts in the language we use out here. Right?

Girls my age never use the word "fair". Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it's beautiful or will make them happy. "Fair" is a man's word, finally, but I can't help feeling that it is also exactly the right word for me now.

I think I just don't like names. Basically, I can't see what's wrong with calling me 'me' or you 'you' or us 'us' or them 'them.

My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning.

Civilization is communication," the doctor said. "That which is not expressed doesn't exist.

Good style, clear argument, but you're not saying anything.

We're on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That's all.

And probably is a word whose weight is incalculable.

Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway.

If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. Don't you think so? They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words.

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language. Olga was absolutely right, Tsukuru thought as he sipped his wine. Not just to explain to others, but to explain to yourself. Force yourself to try to explain it, and you create lies.

In fact, I would argue that these mythic modes are more easily identifiable in historiographical than they are in 'literary' texts. For historians usually work with much less linguistic (and therefore less poetic) self-consciousness than writers of fiction do. They tend to treat language as a transparent vehicle of representation that brings no cognitive baggage of its own into the discourse.

This movement between alternative linguistic modes conceived as alternative descriptive protocols is, I would argue, a distinguishing feature of all the great classics of the 'literature of fact.

In Moscow there were a hundred different words for sadness, and one of them was joy.

Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montréal, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew which utensils to use while eating at a fancy dinner. It was very proper because they learned it from books. They didn't know slang or how to curse. They didn't know how to do anything other than be proper and reserved. It was state-sponsored, dry-clean-only French.

Only within metaphysics does logic exist.